Until thirty years ago on Nov. 24, 1994, everyone thought that Merlot from Chile was a little odd. Good, yes. Tasty, yes. But very different than merlot grown elsewhere. The leaves of this “Chilean Merlot” turned bright crimson after harvest in a completely different way than merlot grown other places, and the way the leaves looked all year was just different too. The fruit of this “Chilean Merlot” tasted much more “green” and so did the resulting wine– less fruity and lots more herbal notes from the pyrazines aka the chemical compound in wines that give them notes of green peppers, jalapeños, bell peppers, green beans, basil, bay leaves. Was it just that the terroir in Chile produced such a distinct version of merlot? 

 

Turns out, this merlot from Chile wasn’t actually strange at all– it was a case of mistaken identity! For 150 years, it was actually Carménère, a grape basically considered extinct in its native Bordeaux, France, and rediscovered by French ampelographer Jean-Michel Boursiquot in Chile’s Maipo Valley where it had been growing for 150 years as merlot.

 

While I’ve known this fascinating story for a few years (scroll down for some of our stories and pairings),and I imagine in the 1980s I drank Merlot from Chile thinking it was Merlot when two was actually Carmenere, this year there’s a twist: